WDC & SanDisk Combined – Soon to be the Top Dog for all Storage Devices.

With the acquisition of SanDisk moving forward, WDC is on the verge of becoming the big boy on the block from a product portfolio and vertical integration perspective. They will have any and all HDD and SSD storage solutions one could want, including the NAND supply behind it (for the SSD side). Having acquired its own NAND supply, WDC is taking care of one of the biggest concerns that many customers have had in the market. Any acquisition comes with its own set of challenges, but WDC has proven in the past that it can successfully get through acquisitions and come out on top on the other side. With the SanDisk acquisition, WDC becomes an immediate major player in the cSSD market, which allows it to offer any storage device – HDD and SSD – that its PC customers may require for the foreseeable future. It also gives WDC a footprint in the enterprise SATA SSD market, a large but cost competitive segment it has largely avoided up until now. For SAS SSDs and PCIe SSDs, some very tough decisions will need to be made. There is some definite overlap with both companies as it relates to these two product segments, but if WDC can repeat its success integrating acquisitions as it has done in the past, the company stands to come out ahead in the end.